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First Upland Hunt

I got the opportunity to hunt upland birds at the Heartland Lodge in Nebo, IL this past weekend and it was a blast. I brought my duck dog with me to see if he could flush any upland birds as he's never hunted anything besides waterfowl. I left him in the box for our first morning shoot and we lost quite a few birds due to the thick cover in the fields. In the afternoon I got him out and after one pass through an area we'd hunted previously he came up with 4 dead quail. He figured out the flushing concept pretty quick and I watched him get crazy eyes when he flushed his first rooster 2 feet from his nose! If you ever get the chance to hunt at the Heartland Lodge I'd highly reccommend it. Our 4 man party shot 144 birds (Pheasant and Quail) in 2 days hunting. It was incredible.

Looks like you had fun. Released birds and lots of them is great for building an upland dog. One of the few areas of training something other than you does the teaching. If you are building an upland dog for wild birds...keep doing the preserve thing but begin to spread less birds over more ground so the dog learns to work for them harder over longer periods of time and as scent diminishes. Seen plenty of preserve dogs to to the wild birds and give up after 30 minutes cause the field ain't peppered with flushes.